Star Wars: The Arcade Game

Cart Dated 12/05/83

Commercially Released

Released through the VGAM Yahoo Group.

Please note: The screenshots for this game are all composites due to the flickering techniques used in Star Wars: The Arcade Game Quite a while back through the Yahoo Group VGAM, a set of seven Star Wars: The Arcade Game prototype ROMs were released. While three of the ROMs released were byte-for-byte identical to the commercial release, five of them were dated and turned out to be genuine work-in-progress ROMs. The first one, pictured to the left, looks to be an early test of the Death Star trench run. This version has very little gameplay completed. There is no sound, the crosshairs do not move, no lazers, and the colors are different than the final release.

Cart Dated 12/15/83

Commercially Released

Released through the VGAM Yahoo Group.

	Well, this one's moving a little bit farther along in development in only a couple of days worth of work. The colors are moving a little bit more towards what we see in the final version and the animation is a bit smoother. The lazers have been implimented and the crosshairs now move. There are still no enemies however, and music is not yet implimented.

Cart Dated 12/22/83

Commercially Released

Released through the VGAM Yahoo Group.

	Well, can't get this one to work. If you have any more luck than I did, throw me an email or let me know on the Webboard.

Cart Dated 12/23/83

Commercially Released

Released through the VGAM Yahoo Group.

	And now we move on to the space battle portion of the game. In this version, basically all you can do is fly around. Most of the gameplay at this point is missing - there are no TIE fighters to fight and you never move onto the next level. Music, once again, is absent.

Cart Dated 1/3/84

Commercially Released

Released through the VGAM Yahoo Group.

The final of the five development versions of Star Wars: The Arcade Game, this version brings the space battle portion of the game even closer to the final release version. TIE Fighters make their first apperance in the development cycle in this version, and other than the absence of collision detection and music, this half of the game appears complete. These five ROMs may not be the most desireable from the standpoint of gameplay, but it's something to see how quickly these games were created for the Atari 2600 compared to the development cycles today, and these 5 dated ROMs give a good example of how work on a game progressed...

Note: the three other ROMs in this series, swtagCE17.bin, swtagCE17_46.bin, and swtagCE17_b.bin are byte-for-byte identical to the released version of this game and will not be posted here.

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